Crunch time in EHF European League as main round ends
The EHF European League Men 2023/24 main round ends with round 4 on Tuesday night as the lineup for the knockout phase will be determined. The direct quarter-final spots from groups II and III are still open, and so is the last available ticket to the play-offs.
We definitely want to win this game. We will do everything in our power to do so. Zabrze are a physically strong team with good centre backs and a lot of shooting threat from the left back. We have to play a good game, be highly effective in attack, and have good organisation at the back. Then we have a chance of beating Zabrze.
Even though we no longer have the opportunity to advance to the next stage of the European League, we have no intention of skipping the match against Rhein-Neckar Löwen. We already managed to beat them once, so I hope we will be able to repeat this result.
Obviously it’s not the same kind of game when you are already sure to finish first. But we want to keep a high European level, offer a good game and a nice show for our 6,000 spectators. Everyone will get playing time, but we need to play at our high level.
This is all a great adventure for us, moving on from the main round of the tournament when we have as many as 80% of the players coming through our own academy. Everything that we are experiencing in the European League, we view as a bonus.
We are still in the adjustment phase, both I to the players and they to me. We have a chance to win the first place in the group and directly qualify for the quarter-finals. Sävehof are an extremely high-quality, young, fast team that play very creative handball and we have a very hard job ahead of us.
In our last European match we face an extremely strong opponent with Skjern. Everyone on the team will have to make their own contribution, and I believe that the guys on the court will show their maximum.
We want to win every match, so this match is important even though we are already qualified for the next phase. This is also a rematch for us. So we will do everything to win in Aarhus tomorrow.
Our focus is on winning this game. But what BSH can achieve was not what we saw in the Campushalle in the first leg. If we get off to a good start, we can certainly get the neutral spectators on our side.
We cannot count on all the players, but the situation is certainly a little better. I expect that the players will play even beyond the limit of a pain, that the fans will feel the moment, that they will support us a lot, and that in the recognisable atmosphere of Hall Slane Bara, we will manage to create a miracle.
We are playing against the best team in our group and it will be a great game to watch. I think we played amazing in Lisbon, but we lost and now we play at home. It’s true that the two points are not important anymore, regarding the qualification, but it will be a great game and it’s always an amazing feeling to play in the atmosphere created by our fans.
We already have the work done, we secured first place in the group, which was one of our objectives. Dinamo fans support their team very well. We have to be focused on what will happen on the court to guarantee another victory. Although this match no longer changes the group's final results, we are going with the desire to win.
We will rotate a little and give injured players who are coming back and younger players even more responsibility and match practice. Nevertheless, we want to win and say goodbye to the main round with a victory. We know how unpleasant Constanta can be to play against.
We still want to enjoy our best European handball season with this last dance, at Füchse. It will be a celebration for handball in general, for Romanian handball, for us too, it will be a perfect time to measure our level again with one of the best teams in the competition. Analysing our journey, I wouldn't change anything from the past, we're going to enter the court every time thinking about the win.
